The Miracle is Existence

Sermon for the 22nd Sunday after Pentacost
Given at St. Francis Xavier in Hyannis
By Rev. Ronnie P. Floyd

In the Gospel today Jesus heals the royal official's son taking pity on the man, who believed that Jesus had the power to save his son.

However at the center of this Gospel, it seems, is not the miracle itself, but Jesus' exasperated statement: Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe.

Our God is so good He called us into being out of nothing simply because He loved us and He gives us all that is for our use and edification. He created the sun which warms the Earth, and gives us light, rising and setting so beautifully. He created the stars of the night, and the moon, the sky, and the clouds which bring us rain. The earth is his handy-work as are all the creatures that walk on it, fly over it, and swim in its oceans. God created all things, creating us last, because all of creation was made for man,
and He infalliablly declared it all good. And yet despite all this, Man reject's God's word unless he sees signs and wonders.

My friends miracles are a means of get out attention, or answering the purest of our prayers. But we must not forget to see and thank God for the greatest miracle of all: our existence! This too is truly a miracle, which no scientist can ever explain away! How often we take it for granted that we exist, and yet logically speaking there is no need for it. That we exist is a marvel, this is why Jesus tells us that we must have hearts like Children to enter God's kingdom, children wonder in awe at the gift of the world, and receive each new experience with such eagerness and joy. Children, at least until we spoil them, are born with an innate spirit of wonder and thanksgiving.

St. Paul in the Epistle to the Ephesians reminds us of the need to approach the world in this way when he says:
Address one another (in) psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and playing to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks always and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father.

Jesus did not come into the world to temporarily heal the little boy in today's gospel, or Peter's mother in law, or the blind man on the road to Jereco
He didn't even come to raise Lazarus, his friend, temporarily from the dead!

Jesus came to heal us all, by renewing in us the spirit of Thanksgiving, and with it a loving trust in God's providential plan for mankind. On the cross Jesus shows us that even the greatest evils, the greatest suffering, and the loss of the gift of life can be made to work for good, if we love and trust God!

As Christians we must take Paul's instruction to heart and live our lives openly praising God for the goodness of existence! & Teaching others to do the same

Modern culture today is really not much different than pagan culture at the time of Christ
it is a culture of death, because weary of its own sin, it has rejected the goodness of Life of existence. Thus, our Christian duty to give witness, to be martyrs, to the Gospel begins with this spirit of thanksgiving.

It was this spirit that allowed the early Church to suffer every sort of persecution for the sake of the Gospel doing so not just with courage, but with such joy that the pagans thought we were drunk!

Friends, do not get drunk on wine, instead get drunk on the goodness of God made manifest in the goodness of Creation.